If Lots of people use keywords to search databases like the WWW or the card catalog of their community library What is a downside to this approach to searching for information?

Answer 1

Basically, any search performed on a database using a computer is exactly the same as going to a filing cabinet to find a document.

If something has been misfiled, or you can't remember the spelling of the document title you're looking for, the document might as well be in the trash because you're not going to find it.

So, the downside to relying on keywords to search using a computer, on the web or offline, is that it's easy to enter keywords which won't necessarily find their target.

Also, the way websites are set up, some inexperienced administrators can omit keywords during construction which are vital to searches.

I know of one professional firm which allowed an outside expert to set up their site, with the awful result that all the keywords their expert deemed 'unnecessary' were deleted, leaving only a few search terms which had no hope of topping the results list from a search by their target market. Even plurals of words were discarded. Nobody in the firm checked the new website to be sure prospective clients would quickly find them.

This occurs with many websites: their owners frequently don't think of pretending to be a total stranger doing a search in order to see how easy they are to find; many also don't try to navigate their own websites and are astonished to discover the website designer's made a shocking mess of it.

For many website owners, if it looks good it must be okay. Some firms check their websites to make sure their photo looks good and their name's spelled right, and that's it.

So a searcher must allow for these contingencies.

The search should start with basic keywords appropriate to the search target, with more terms added if the results aren't as expected. Learn to used 'advanced search' options, and make use of logical operators, if your search engine supports them. Keep track of improvements and changes (not necessarily the same thing) in the search engine to see whether new operators are available, and so on.

The upside to keyword searching on the web is that search engines, or crawlers, are pretty smart creatures and getting smarter all the time, so even keywords which once would have been too vague and returned unwieldy and unusable results can now come closer to their target than in the past.

Check out alternative search facilities frequently; don't stay faithful to just one for old times' sake! I use Clusty (link below) because it sorts its results into folders, making it simple to pick out the hot topics among the results. But there are many more search engines out there; keep abreast of developments.

If you are asked to develop a searchable database, don't reinvent the wheel! List all the possible techniques and refinements you can think of, and keep adding to it as you have new ideas.

When you've got a fairly comprehensive wish-list, go looking for established databases which might be similar to your perfect vision. Check with places using search facilities you admire, and get in contact with as many people in the know as you can.

Too many people fall for a goodlooking, expensive system that operates just fine for others but is not, they discover too late, the best for them.

Google got it right; so can others.